Achieve A Success Mindset - 9 Important Steps

The ability of the human mind can serve us beyond our wildest imaginations. It has an unlimited capacity to learn; and when properly nurtured, it promotes clarity of thought, achievement, and even longevity of life. Taking responsibility for the successful activity of your mind and deliberately stimulating it for productive output can reap tremendous rewards.

It is easy for us to project our mental activities toward external matters instead of looking within ourselves and intelligently utilizing the natural gifts of the brain. But, this introspection is precisely where success begins and effective action gets processed.

When you understand that the mind is where imagination, inspiration, belief, change, and self-discipline must take place, and you begin to infuse powerful insights and techniques to structure the process, the potential results can be remarkable.

Taking control of your mental faculties and nurturing them to their best advantage provides significant inroads toward accomplishing your important goals. For example, you learn how to overcome doubt, mental clutter, tolerations, resistance, and other self-limiting obstacles which can undermine, distract, and sabotage your personal growth and actions for the success you envision.

To help you find greater clarity toward achieving what matters most to you, carefully consider how you can begin to implement some or all of the following 9 key action steps for a successful mindset. Once you realize the potential impact these points can have in your life, you will certainly want to make them a part of your everyday action plan for success.

1. Understand that happiness and success originate from within you.

It is the world inside you that creates the conditions of your life. To positively change and grow you must truly realize that success or failure is a reflection of your inner world. That includes, but not limited to, your values, beliefs, personal contentment, knowledge, the way you think, the choices you make, and your imagination.

Put another way, what you reveal outwardly depends on your inner thoughts and beliefs and how you decide to process and act on those elements. Once this is understood and actively addressed, inward and outward success can nurture one another and contribute to personal happiness and the life you desire.

2. The mind holds a tremendous desire to be positively stimulated and to experience the feeling of success.

This part of you that feels, perceives, and reasons thirsts for your input and follow-through to achieve. In other words, your brain is designed to solve problems and to help you reach the goals that you give it. Think of your mind as a clean slate, where you have the opportunity to nourish and empower it with only the healthiest thoughts, beliefs, and intentions.

Now, realizing that your mind wants to experience positive outcomes and takes its instructions from you, what exactly is it that you want to invest so that you can experience the greatest return for your efforts? The thoughts you choose to contribute toward your desired outcome gage the results you derive.

3. Choice of thought and beliefs shape your life.

What you think about and believe is what you attract to your life. Clearly, thinking positively and actions of integrity beget the opportunity for more positive results. Likewise, negative, limiting or defeating thoughts beget the likelihood of negative results. Have you heard others declare that you should be careful what you wish for (say or think) as you may very well get it? There is truth in those words, and it can work for or against you.

The way that you interpret or explain things to yourself is critical in determining who you are as person and the outcomes you experience. This process is under your control. It is your choice whether your thoughts are constructive and effective or detrimental.

Since choice of thought and beliefs largely shape the life you live, it is wise not to leave this to happenstance. You can have thoughts of self-defeating beliefs, magnified fears, and other limiting habits that will only hold you back. Or, you can be authentically positive and passionate to accomplish what is beneficial and important to you, and attract that to you. This holds true for all facets of life.

4. Decisions, actions, and results are your responsibility.

To experience a purposeful, balanced, and fulfilled life, it is imperative to accept 100 percent responsibility for the choices you make. This includes what you think, the beliefs you hold, the decisions you make, the actions you take, and the results you derive from those activities. There is only one person responsible for the quality of life you live. That person is you.

When things turn sour and you blame others for your downfall, that is a dead end road. However, if you have accepted responsibility for your actions and their results, and events do not succeed as you had planned, you then have the opportunity to learn from your trials and errors. Thus, you are ahead of the game when you try again. You will be determined to try again, because you will have more information and your resolve will be even stronger.

By accepting full responsibility for your decisions, actions, and results, your approach going into any endeavor is optimized for the potential of a more positive outcome. And, when the outcome is successful, you have the privilege to reap all the well-deserved benefits.

5. The mind concentrates on a single thought at any given time - use it wisely.

If you accept that the mind holds a single thought at any given time, it would then seem advantageous that each thought should be truly constructive and contribute to your life. Perhaps that would not be realistic 100 percent of the time, but working toward a more effective choice of thought is certainly a better alternative than living with self-limiting or disempowering thoughts.

Here is an exercise that reaps tremendous rewards: Learn to swiftly replace negative thoughts with positive, productive, or inspiring ones. It takes practice to do this consistently. But, you will find as you develop this insight and habit of capturing worthwhile, energizing thoughts, negative thoughts will be inhibited and eventually lose their power. When consciously implemented, this exercise will positively impact your outlook and your results.

6. Know that your thought patterns are habits, and some habits need to be changed.

Success is about living a personally fulfilling life, pursuing challenges and aspirations, and experiencing outcomes which positively impact you and those around you. Remember, this begins with your choice of thought.

Like most habits, you can change your patterns of thought. This includes what you think about and the best use of your mental energy. Often, we succumb to thinking patterns which do not offer much value. It is easy to become stuck with the same thoughts and beliefs, speaking the same words, and repeatedly doing the same things. Such a pattern can stifle creativity, learning, and opportunities for a more interesting and adventurous life.

You can learn to identify your own patterns of thought and recognize where, or if, change is needed. But, you must be diligent when making changes, as familiar patterns (habits) which are not serving you well are deeply entrenched and new thinking patterns take time to establish.

Because you become what you think about most of the time, it is important to consciously change less productive habits to thinking patterns that clearly contribute toward attaining your most desired way of living.

7. Self-image must be nurtured.

Each of us has our own native abilities, signature strengths, learning styles, and personality traits. As you move through your daily life, your self-image can support or sabotage your efforts. It can mean the difference between feeling inspired and taking action or being apathetic and remaining stagnate.

An immediate way to begin addressing this issue is to take note of the mental pictures you hold of yourself. Are those images in alignment with what you actually desire for your life? If they are, that is outstanding. Continue to nurture and support yourself.

If, however, after an honest self-appraisal, you feel a change is required to match the self-image you want, then figure out what change is necessary and make a commitment to accomplish it.

Mentally see the change you want to achieve and its successful completion in as much detail as possible. While taking daily action to make the change, continue to repeatedly visualize your desired result, refining it as you go along. If you are persistent in this process, you will notice a shift in how you perceive yourself. Your self-image will experience a positive transformation, your confidence level will increase, and you will generate enthusiasm and momentum to accomplish more in your life.

8. Goals require belief, commitment, and persistence.

After determining what you want, with the end result in mind, establish both short and long term goals which are worthwhile, achievable, crystal clear, and measurable. Know why these goals are important to you and what inspires you to achieve them. Then courageously commit to your goals with specific time frames.

Do not let fear, false starts, adversity, or other people derail your pursuit. Believing in the outcome determines the outcome. Know that you deserve what you want and that you will achieve your goal. Hold fast to your vision and maintain your focus.

Once you have refined your written goals and created a plan-of-action, find ways to work your plan throughout each day. Consistently remind yourself of your goals and passionately pursue them.

Visualize your success and say your goals aloud. Incorporate as many of your senses as possible to help embed your goals within the deepest recesses of you mind. By concentrating your mental and physical energy on a single purpose, dormant positive forces begin to surface and re-ignite to support your desired outcome.

9. The subconscious mind is central to your success.

To truly effect worthwhile and long-term change toward achieving what matters most to you, your affirmative thoughts must reach the subconscious mind. It is said that as much as 90 percent of ones behavior and beliefs are the result of what the subconscious mind accepts.

Author Michael J. Gelb, a recognized pioneer of creative thinking, accelerated learning, and innovative leadership, writes,: Brain researchers estimate that your unconscious (subconscious) data base outweighs the conscious on an order exceeding ten million to one. This data base is the source of your hidden, natural genius. In other words, a part of you is much smarter than you are. The wise people regularly consult that smarter part.

When you tap into the subconscious mind with your new behavior or change of habit, this very special place will work amazingly well for you. While this process does require commitment and a consistent pattern of repetition of the right thoughts the benefits are enormous. Think of it as a treasured storehouse of knowledge and wisdom which is constantly supporting you and attracting ways to help achieve your desires, even though you are not always aware of it.

It has been shown that if you earnestly practice the exercise of feeding your mind with well-chosen information for at least 20 to 30 consecutive days you will have an excellent chance of impacting the subconscious mind for positive change. This concentrated effort on a given change of thought will reward your discipline and conditioning.

Rather than letting your environment control your life, you will be astonished at how your subconscious mind can energize and support you when you learn to consult it and nurture it with the information that serves you best. As a result, you soon discover a significant change in the way you think, feel and act. For some people this is a subtle process and for others it is blaring quantum leap, but either can reveal successful effects.